Empyreal Environs

Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break this team got. Yet today I consider myself the riche..., that is, luckiest man on the face of this earth. I have been in ballparks for 23 seasons, some of those not complete seasons, and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans. As well as millions and millions of dollars. But the fans are more important. Really.

Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known Miguel Cairo? Also, the builder of baseball’s evilest empire, Brian Cashman? To have spent five years with that wonderful, sometimes little, sometimes big fellow, Jason Giambi? Then to have spent the next those years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, that coddler of gargantuan egos such as mine, the best manager in baseball today, Joe Torre? Sure, I’m lucky.

When the Red Sox, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you unrelenting overtures to rejoin them to finish out your career — that’s something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white lab coats remember you with trophies — that’s something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter because of all the cash you haul in — that’s something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body through better chemistry — it’s a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed, following me as I chased the next big paycheck — that’s the finest I know.

So I close in saying that this team may have had a tough break, but I have an awful lot to get paid for.